


Losing the Outfit

by Annabelle_Priscilla_McQuillan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Bucky!Cap, F/M, Kidfic, M/M, Makeoutus Interruptus, Multi, My giftee wanted, Other, PWP, Period-Typical Racism, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War, Preggy Peggy, Sam!Cap, Spent way too much time reading about the Spanish Civil War for a one-off line in Peggy's backstory, Strippers: the World's First Costumed Vigilantes, always carry an umbrella, and happy endings, hopefully it worked out, i hate everything about F&WS how did this become mostly about Sam and Bucky, tried to get creative with the tropes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27851342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annabelle_Priscilla_McQuillan/pseuds/Annabelle_Priscilla_McQuillan
Summary: "I regret to inform you that Brandt has had another idea."A Secret Santa gift forAmethystKrystalarranged by theStar Spangled Secret Santa Exchange.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4
Collections: Star Spangled Secret Santa 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amethystkrystal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amethystkrystal/gifts).



> [Pargoletta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pargoletta/pseuds/Pargoletta) and I once had a discussion about how the USO show resembles what you'd see on the vaudeville circuit, which by the 1940s had gone out of fashion. She compared it to _Gypsy_ , where Mama Rose is trying to get her kids' act on vaudeville even though the medium had already died off. Of course, since the end result of _Gypsy_ is that one of her kids becomes the famous striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, I said, "Imagine if Brandt had some _other_ style of theatrical entertainment in mind..."

_\- June 13th, 1937_

"Morning, children."

"It's one in the afternoon, man," Sam mutters out from underneath the hand that's shielding his eyes from the sun filtering into the room between the blinds.

"And I _hope_ we're not your children," Peggy sniffs. 

"The welcome I get," Bucky huffs, reaching down to plant his hand on Steve's head and ruffle his hair. As predicted, Steve does not look up from the pad of paper he's been studying for the past three minutes. "You all really know how to make a fella feel loved."

"You only say _morning, children_ when you're about to tell us something we're gonna hate," Sam continues, his tone and the position of his hand both unchanging.

"Why don't you just move out of the light?"

"Why don't you just shell out for curtains?"

"But Sam, if I did that, we wouldn't have the budget for _this_ ," Bucky say, flicking his wrist up to show off the paper he'd carried into the room.

"And what is _that?_ " Peggy asks, narrowing her gaze. Enough conversation has penetrated Steve's awareness to make him look up, as well.

"I regret to inform you that Brandt has had another idea." Bucky drops his arm so he can put the rough outline their boss had foisted on them directly in Steve's face. "He'd like us to put together a show for that most salacious of holidays, the Fourth of July."

" _Wha~t?_ " Steve groans, pulling the paper out from in between his face and Bucky's hand so he can actually read it.

"How does know what kind of establishment he's running, right?" Sam asks, finally sitting up enough to move his face out of the sunlight. "Ain't the Fourth of July a little... _wholesome_ for us to build an act around?"

"C'mon Sam, you've worked here long enough to know that there's nothing Brandt isn't willing to contaminate with bad taste," Bucky says, with a smirk.

"And a three-weak deadline," Peggy grumbles.

"Of course! What other time frame would he provide?"

"You're forgetting that time he gave us two days to put something together for Easter," Steve says, scrubbing a hand down his face and across his eyes.

"Ah, yes," Peggy mutters. "I suppose we ought to count our many blessings, then."

"I know I do," Bucky says, grinning. Sam pretends to throw up in his mouth, and Bucky flips him a quick bird.

"Hey, hey!" Peggy says, resting a frown on her face and a hand on her baby bump. "I shouldn't be seeing distressing things like that in my condition."

"You do know what kind of... _life_ you're running, right?" Sam directs at her.

"The doctor said to avoid _violent_ scenes. He said nothing about _lascivious_ ones."

"Speaking of lascivious scenes," Bucky says. "We need to go work out a new number with Nat. C'mon, Sam."

"Yes suh, Mistuh Barnes, suh," Sam mutters, tipping his chair backwards so he can use the subsequent forward momentum to stand up. Bucky makes a great show of rolling his eyes, steps out of the doorway to make room, and pinches Sam's ass as he passes.

Sam whirls around on his heel, plants his hand on Bucky's chest, and pins him against the wall.

Bucky _oofs_ , just barely, but Sam can hear him, and Steve and Peggy know he did it. He fixes a smirk on his face, not breaking eye contact, and from the corner of his eye Steve can see Bucky's breathing deepen ever so slightly.

"Hey now you two," Steve drawls, suppressing his own little smirk. "What did Peggy _just_ say about violent scenes?"

"Don't fret, Steven," Peggy says, blinking slowly. "This most definitely counts as lascivious."

"How long you think we got until they _have_ to go find Nat?" 

"Considering..." Bucky says, before he has to catch his breath, "considering the only people who know about the new act at all are the four of us and Brandt..."

"Long enough then," Sam mutters, as he bunches his fingers into Bucky's shirt and drags them back into the room, reaching back with his free hand to shut the door behind them.

*

The Silk Mill is a holdout of both the [Cotton Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Club)'s popularity and Fiorello's raids, kept open by Brandt's abundant supply of capital, guilty pleasure, and willingness to make every act a prurient one.

Bucky was the first of the four to start working there, when an open position for a bouncer finally found a use for that boxing hobby of his. Subsequently, a disagreement between Brandt and his original manager found a use for some of Bucky's actual _job_ skills.

Peggy was next, after her husband ran away from her independent streak with the [Lincoln Battalion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Battalion), and the support he would have provided for the unborn baby got buried alongside him at [Jarama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jarama). Too obviously reticent, and soon to be too obviously pregnant, to actually get on stage, Bucky took costuming responsibilities away from the actual performers and gave them to her.

Steve came third, after being let go from another job and letting Bucky convince him to originate the position of Peggy's assistant-slash-Head of Advertising, because for all Peggy's fashion sense she was a shit hand at drawing. And Sam completed the set, as a result of one of Steve's ads for a trumpet player to replace the one that Broadway snapped up.

The four of them got along famously. _"Infamously,_ in fact," Natasha, the lead choreographer, put it to her boyfriend Clint, another player in the band, with an arch of her eyebrows.

She wears the same look, accompanied by her arms folded across her chest, when the door to the manager's office finally opens again. They do a fair job at discretion--no one's hair is too badly mussed, and Peggy's shoe could have come off for any number of reasons--but Natasha prides herself on her ability to listen at doors.

"Brandt dropped by while you were 'out to lunch'. You're welcome."

"What'd he want?" Steve asks, fiddling with the collar of his shirt, trying to cover up the hickey on the collar of his body.

"Right after you left him," Natasha aims at Bucky, "he took a phone call from an old friend of his. One who has," she clears her throat, "similar proclivities to yourselves. The pair of them got to talking about the new act. And this gentleman had a... _request_."

"We don't take requests," Sam mutters. 

"When it's a Senator you do. Or rather," she flicks her gaze back towards Bucky, "our fearless manager does."

"Why me in particular?" Bucky asks. 

"Because Steve's a dead hoofer and Sam isn't white."

"True on both counts," Sam says, and the sympathetic look Steve gives him is mixed with affronted annoyance.

Bucky furrows his brow. "This guy wants a male dancer?" 

"See, this is why you're in charge; your brilliant detective mind," Natasha says, tapping her temple with her pointer finger.

Bucky makes a face at her. "Well...all right. I can do that, I guess."

"It isn't as though you haven't any experience," Peggy murmurs, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. 

"Hell, you've already got fans," Steve mutters, before his blush reveals that he momentarily forgot Natasha was there.

"You are _far_ too mired in debauchery for that," Natasha says. Steve makes a face at her; she smiles lightly, and claps her hands together. "Now. Sam, Mr. Manager, if you would." She crooks her finger. "Tear yourselves away. We have an act to plan."

The pair of them salute with just the right mix of sharpness and languidness to make her switch which finger she's stuck in the air, and she keeps it up as she backs out of the room, beckoning them to follow after her nonetheless.

Peggy waves them off first, starting a chain reaction of brandishing good-byes, and once Bucky shuts the door behind him, Steve slides his swivel chair closer to Peggy.

"So I have some ideas for the costume."

Peggy takes his sketchbook out of his hands, and gently whaps him in the face with it. "Oh, I bet you do."


	2. Chapter 2

_\- July 4th, 1937_

The nature of the Silk Mill practically requires it to be situated in a seedy locale. That was one of the reasons Sam was initially reluctant to answer that ad for a trumpet player. His folks had worked, begged, and borrowed their way into a decent, and by decent they meant safe, neighborhood, and taking a step back in that regard felt disrespectful to all that effort. But letting Sarah and Gideon go hungry felt worse, and at least Sam now had a group of people to walk with to and from his place of business.

Amongst other perks, of course.

Like the outfit Steve and Peggy had come up with. Adhering to Brandt's taste--"taste" as Steve would put it, replete with a profound roll of his eyes--had started out as a source of deep frustration bordering on existential pain, until Bucky audibly _whined_ over an outfit they'd come up with that Peggy was modeling, and the idea to have _fun_ with the garish was opened up to them.

The concoction they'd come up with was a mostly blue skintight number; the abdomen was made up of alternating stripes of red and negative space, easily unbutton- and peel-away-able to match the star shape already cut into the chest. Rounding out the ensemble is a garbage can lid, painted in red and blue circular stripes, to shield the parts of the dancer that would get him arrested if exposed; and a mask, to shield his face from any cops who might have planted themselves in the audience.

It pairs beautifully with the song-and-dance that he and Natasha had come up with, as Sam finds his instrument to be inherently comedic.

_"I don't think it's **that** funny," Steve said the first time Sam voiced this opinion, in those words, aloud--straight-faced this time, as there was no one beyond the foursome present to hear him._

_"It's really not," Peggy mused, after Steve narrowly dodged two thumpings, but failed to evade the third. "Nor is the, ehm, ensemble it's part of."_

_"Kinda stretchin' the metaphor there, Peg," Sam replied, though he couldn't help the grin trying to break through._

_She rolled her eyes. "You're a handsome man, Sam. You could make a killing as a performer. In England, at least. Where people are civilized."_

_"You think?" Sam asked, with a raised eyebrow; Peggy shrugged her only-partial retraction of the statement.  
_

_"Well, believe me, you'll get to perform, all right," Bucky said, fiddling with one of the red strips of fabric. "Private audience or otherwise; we're getting you into this thing._ _And then right back out of it."_

Sam kinda hopes it won't be tonight, though. It gets hot under the stage lights, especially in summer, and he doesn't wanna dress himself in secondhand sweat. Bucky's already glistening by the time the final rehearsal ends, about three hours before call time.

"What, Steve and Pegs ashamed of me or something?" Bucky asks, after he gathers up the discarded parts of his costume and hops off stage to greet Sam, the only one of his three partners to be seen in-house.

"Horribly," Sam deadpans, as Bucky starts to put his outfit back together.

"You're awful, Buck," Clint chimes in from a few feet behind Sam. "The worst."

"Brandt called; sent 'em on an errand," Natasha calls from stage right, where she's going over last-minute notes with the female ensemble. "They should be back soon."

"Thank you for actually being _useful_ , Nat," Bucky calls back. "C'mon," he directs at Sam, "we'll go wait for 'em in their office."

"Yes suh, Mistuh Barnes, suh."

Peggy is old-fashioned about [drinking alcohol while pregnant,](https://www.apa.org/about/gr/science/spin/2015/04/alcohol-pregnancy.pdf) so she keeps a few bottles of sparkling cider under the desk. There's one already opened, and Bucky takes the first, quick swig before tossing it to Sam. Sam drinks, and makes to offer it back, but Bucky's already sat down and opened up Steve's sketchbook; the flipping noise of the pages tells Sam that the rest of the bottle is his.

"They shoulda kept the sailor hat," Bucky says, after a minute. "I know the point's to protect my identity and all, but the flight cap's kinda uncanny."

"It's not that bad." Sam drains the last mouthful and sets the bottle aside. "Makes me think of the [Phantom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom)."

Bucky snorts. "A stripping superhero, huh?"

"Won't lie to you, pal. It's kinda hot. You're gonna make Brandt's friend go all dizzy. Faint in his seat."

"If only Ma could see me now."

"She'd have to avert her eyes," Sam says, voice suddenly low, and Bucky has only just enough time to toss the sketchbook on the table before Sam's trying to take its place in his lap. If any words had been about to roll off of Bucky's tongue, they instead get slipped into Sam's mouth, and they're quite content to stay there, silent, for awhile.

What manages to be heard doesn't come for several minutes, but when it does, it's not witty repartee.

"D'you hear that?"

Sam pulls his head back and re-orients his focus to the outside world. In about a second he does, in fact, _hear that_ , and nearly takes out Bucky's left femur scrambling off of him.

"For fuck's sake, she's _pregnant_."


	3. Chapter 3

_\- July 4th, 1937; con't_

As reluctant as Steve and Peggy both were to acknowledge it, Sam was entirely right about the seediness of their work locale, and where a group of four might intimidate most petty crooks, a pregnant woman and a 90-pound man on their own don't cut as threatening a figure.

It's why Peggy 1) always carries an umbrella, 2) got Steve to start doing it, too, and 3) asked him to teach her about baseball.

She's been hitting what would have been homerun after grandslam if there weren't extra weight on her pelvis, directing strength away from her thoracic spine and throwing off her aim. Steve, for his part, has never actually had the upper body strength for that kind of artistry; his strategy is to just keep his grip on his weapon and hope his onslaught is the type of annoying that a person runs away from. 

No such luck today, on either count.

What luck they _do_ have is that they're being mugged within earshot of their office when a window is opened (with privacy still protected by the blinds). There's only about twenty-five seconds between Bucky hearing the sounds of a scuffle and Bucky grabbing one of the assailants by the shoulder, whirling him around, and all but throwing him face-first into the street.

The noise and movement distracts the guy crowding Steve and Peggy into a corner between a building and a gate. He sees Sam speeding towards him, which means he doesn't see Steve drop to the ground, grab his ankle, and pull. It's not strong enough to topple him, but it pulls him off balance enough that there's no resistance when Sam kicks him in the chest and into the wall. 

Peggy stumbles out of the way as Steve scrambles to his feet. The man Bucky had thrown down is also tripping back upright, but much faster and with his fists swinging. Bucky has to yank himself back to avoid getting hit in the face, and in that opening the mugger is able to grab Bucky's left arm; the man is still falling forward, and he twists Bucky's arm behind his back as he loses the fight against gravity.

Bucky swallows the yelp of pain, but Peggy sees it on his face; she still has her umbrella, and she rushes forward to beat the mugger's hands and face with it until he lets Bucky go.

Sam and Steve have hauled their own would-be attacker up onto his feet, and before he can regain his balance they throw him forward, smashing him into his cohort and sending them both tumbling to the pavement again. Bucky's cradling his left arm in his right, but that doesn't stop him from giving the mugger nearest to him a strong kick just below the ribs. Steve picks up his umbrella from where one of the muggers had thrown it on the ground, and chucks it at the back of the man's head as he tries to sit up.

"Feel free to fuck off any time now, guys," Sam calls.   


The invitation is accepted gladly, and not gone back on even when Peggy gives one of them a parting kick in the ankle as they flee. Even after the men are gone, though, Steve, Sam, and Bucky creep forward towards the sidewalk, bracing for a second wave. 

"Oh, dear."

Steve, Sam, and Bucky turn around in unison to look at Peggy. Peggy, however, is looking at her left leg. Specifically, at the line of fluid trickling down it.

"I wasn't expecting that for another week or two." She blinks, and then glances up. "Well. Happy birthday to you, Steve. I know you said no gifts, but..." She grimaces. "I literally couldn't help myself."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I am a slow writer with ADHD who struggles with prompts, _and_ I started a new career in the last month, which means that I haven't written everything for this story that I'd like to. 
> 
> I offer up what I have completed as a cliffy for the purposes of the SSSS, and I will get the rest out asap! 
> 
> Thank you to AmethystKrystal, and whomever else is reading this, for your patience -_-;;


End file.
